Moose

Like the branch that scraped your head with twigs of blood in the backyard on the concrete you lay lost in the rays of a promised fecundity, you fell, the tree gasping.

'It's light', he promised, outlining your thigh with the tip of his nail bitten finger, along the ridge of bone where the mad things play with stability and tremor.

Not like the cricket ball that traversed your child hood sky, a shooting star of rubber, galaxy gremlin over hot bitumen, you in long socks and dresses made for pulling up. To the base of your neck it came to the bottom of your spine it moved, you made a girly squawk to mark the beginning of a journey set in stone.

'It's very light, made from ply board. Not like the hard stuff they used in the old days', he assures.

Unlike the bobcat munching on the roof, tiny shards falling from a demolition of memories in five seconds flat that overtook your hair in envelopes of words - a ghost dressed in black speaking in asbestos tongues.

'It's all so light', he whispers, towards dark possums scratching inside the walls, as soft sheets plaited with percale and threads that keep counting balance and yes it's true, everything is light: this leaving with no moving, this weaving of beige lies, this sticking to hope.

1

Moose

A picture of a moose with antlers the size of guitars is hanging over the bed. It croons, and what else is there to do? No, it won't fall on you two beneath it, as you curl up on opposite sides of the world, having already left with no place to go - a centipede crawling from its nostril humming Rhapsody in Blue. And you look right into that blueness as you call to them - Can you save me?